For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Audi A8 have pretensioners to tighten the seatbelts and eliminate dangerous slack in the event of a collision and force limiters to limit the pressure the belts will exert on the passengers. The Chrysler 300 doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The A8’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The 300 doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the A8 and 300 have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The A8 has power child safety locks, allowing the driver to activate and deactivate them from the driver's seat and to know when they're engaged. The 300’s child locks have to be individually engaged at each rear door with a manual switch. The driver can’t know the status of the locks without opening the doors and checking them.
The Audi A8 has standard driver and front passenger side knee airbags mounted low on the dashboard. These airbags helps prevent the driver and front passenger from sliding under their seatbelts or the main frontal airbags; this keeps them better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. Knee airbags also help keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The 300 doesn’t offer a front passenger side knee airbag.
The A8 has a standard front seat center airbag, which deploys between the driver and front passenger, protecting them from injuries caused by striking each other in serious side impacts. The 300 doesn’t offer front seat center airbags.
The A8 has a standard Secondary Collision Brake Assist, which automatically applies the brakes in the event of a crash to help prevent secondary collisions and prevent further injuries. The 300 doesn’t offer a post collision braking system: in the event of a collision that triggers the airbags, more collisions are possible without the protection of airbags that may have already deployed.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the A8. But it costs extra on the 300.
A passive infrared night vision system optional on the A8 helps the driver to more easily detect people, animals or other objects in front of the vehicle at night. Using an infrared camera to detect heat, the system then displays the image on a monitor in the dashboard and even aims one of the vehicle’s headlights in the direction of the person or object. The 300 doesn’t offer a night vision system.
The A8’s standard lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the 300.
The A8 has a standard Top View Camera System to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The 300 only offers a rear monitor and front and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the sides.
Both the A8 and 300 offer rear cross-traffic warning, but the A8 with Rear Cross-Traffic Assist also has Automatic Brake Activation (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The 300’s Rear Cross Path Detection doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the A8 and the 300 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, daytime running lights, rearview cameras and available blind spot warning systems.